Misunderstood or misinterpreted though this science has been, she now offers her aid to fortify some of the weakest outposts of religion. And thus shall it ever be with all true science. Twin sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, she will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together. But human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven. LECTURE VI. GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. The subject of the present lecture is the divine benevolence, as taught by geology. But what connection, it will be asked, can there be between the history of rocks and the benevolence of God? Do not the leading points of that history consist of terrible catastrophes, aqueous or igneous, by which the crust of the earth has been dislocated and upheaved, mountains lifted up and overturned, the dry land inundated, now by scorching lava, and now by the ocean, sweeping from its face all organic life, and entombing its inhabitants in a stony grave? Who can find the traces of benevolence in the midst of such desolation and death? Is it not the very place where the objector would find arguments to prove the malevolence, certainly the vindictive justice, of the Deity? This, I am aware, is a not unnatural _prima facie_ view of this subject. But it is a false one. Geology does furnish some very striking evidence of divine benevolence; and if I can show this, and from so unpromising a field gather decisive arguments on this subject, they will be so much clear gain to the cause of Theism. This is what, therefore, I shall now attempt to do. _In the first place, I derive an argument for the divine benevolence from the manner in which soils are formed by the disintegration and decomposition of rocks._